Hi Carl,
Carl said: To make an important distinction here, psychopath and sociopath are not interchangable words. A psychopath experiences a break with reality, whereas a sociopath has no conscience. ... Based on the definition ["...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others..."] provided by the American Psychological Association, it would appear that ALL morality is based in the intellect. One definition of evil is intelligence without compassion. I think that the intelligence part is necessary. A tiger that kills an antelope isn't being evil, it's being a tiger. Matt: I think this is a wonderfully insightful note. For one, Pirsig has a deeply ingrained suspiciousness of psychology, and more especially the profession. However, there doesn't seem to be in the above any violation of Pirsigian insights about the philosophy of insanity (in other words, it's a nice restorative for our trust). The psychopath, in fact, appears as Pirsig's insane brujo, outside the mythos (which makes it easy, then, to apply Pirsigian insight as a restorative to psychology). Second, however, it gives us a hint on how to help Pirsig distinguish between breakers of patterns, which Carl, I think, has brought out well. There are two keys: 1) "compassion"--this is a feeling, and though we don't have a theory yet about emotions, I would submit cursorily that they are a biological/social hybrid (which means at the very least they are _at_ the social level). However, 2) "the rights of others," Carl says, are "based in the intellect": rights are conferred because _we confer them_. They are intellectual patterns, abstractly manipulated. We made them up to express something: perhaps our compassion. However, they are quite precisely distinguished from compassion (bio/social) for the exact purpose of dealing with someone like the sociopath: a person who just doesn't have that bio/social pattern. Society used to kill such people to protect itself, but now our society has advanced to the stage where it doesn't have to: we have something explicitly external to follow, with sanctions in case you don't. Follow these rules, and you can stay out of jail. You may be a horrible human being, but you can have your freedom. _Should_ we do this? I think we must, and for Pirsigian reasons. The trick is to first understand that our society is not about reproducing the perfect human being. A _perfect_ pedagogy, in fact, wouldn't produce a _single kind_ of human, because as Pirsig taught us, we _need_ variation in the hopes for a _more perfect_ human we can't yet envision (it's also built into our Constitution and made splendidly relevant by the former Senator from Illinois in one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard). In other words, room for betterness (which calls into question the very idea of "perfection" or "bestness," though not the striving). Dave's right: it would suck to have sociopaths. But we shouldn't expect our pedagogy to wipe it out. In fact, we need a moral philosophy that allows for their existence in society even while condemning the pattern for pedagogical reasons. Okay, so _why_ would we do this? In case some sociopath is the next brujo. That's the answer that Pirsig additionally offers to typical Millian liberal morality, which just says that you should leave people alone as long as they don't mess with other people. Pirsig helps us to answer _why_ Mill was right: because leaving people alone to their own devices might help everyone in the long run. Even though I doubt sociopathic behavior would be essential to his or her brujoness, i.e. lack of compassion would doubtfully be the next Dynamic leap forward, some sociopath might have a great role to play (or rather, create). As the perfect example for my purposes: the new Sherlock Holmes by the BBC. (Three excellent episodes on InstaFlix.) The new Holmes is a puzzle-solver, a bored inference-machine that gets off on dispelling mysteries. He's very similar to Monk (a show based itself on the Sherlock Holmes myth), but not only is he socially retarded, he's somewhat mean-spirited about it. He's very quickly identified to us as a "freak" by police officers, and at one point a "rival" calls him a "psychopath" and Holmes snaps back "I'm a high-functioning sociopath, idiot, read a book." The above description is exactly what he means. One of the officers also notes that Holmes is a serial killer just waiting to happen, and it will happen when he gets bored of saving people. And this prophecy scans with Holmes' behavior. And after being a dick to numerous people, and repeatedly to Watson (played by the adorable Martin Freeman), in the third episode his lack of compassion--we almost by this point want to say "humanity"--erupts in Watson snapping at him on just this point. Holmes scathingly asks whether compassion will help solve the puzzles and the people, and Watson wearily hangs his head in response. To which Holmes sarcastically notes, "Oh, I see...you're disappointed in me." Watson's disappointment is us judging Holmes harshly--and correctly--as a sociopath, though it has no effect on _his_ behavior. The scene just ends, with Holmes having the last assholish word, thumbing his nose at compassion, without which the world as a whole would be a Hobbesian nightmare. The brilliance of the show is that Holmes _doesn't_ reform. But people are still saved through his actions. In punches up this seeming dilemma perfectly (as Carl put it): "Based on the above, this would NOT be moral behavior. For the behavior to be moral, it must stem from inside the person, rather than from an outside agency. From this perspective, would it be possible for someone to behave in a moral manner without feeling anything for the person their dealing with?" All we need for this inside/outside is a sense of "inside" that is an internalization of the outside (which I called "autonomy" and offered a description of the process in the last post). And this Holmes does lack. And yes, it does seem possible for someone to "behave in a moral manner" and still _not_ be a moral person (along our assumed definitions). And what the dilemma punches up is this: acting morally doesn't always matter. It is still the thing we want, and should teach, but it doesn't always matter. And--what's more--this isn't just a dose of realism, a lesson about the way the world works. It's the way we _want_ the world. Matt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
